Ethernet Ring Protection Switching (ERPS) is described, for example, in ITU-T Recommendation G.8032/Y.1344 (February 2012 and August 2015), the contents of which are incorporated by reference. G.8032v1 supported a single ring topology and G.8032v2 supports multiple rings/ladder topology. As described herein, G.8032 is used to refer to ERPS and the various incarnations of ITU-T Recommendation G.8032/Y.1344. By virtue of its topology, ring based networks, which have learning and flooding on the Layer 2 Ethernet domain, are prone to data packet loops. G.8032 is based on a scheme in which loop-avoidance is the most important criterion as far as protocol specification is concerned. G.8032 allows multiple “virtual” rings (VR) to be present on network elements (i.e., ring nodes) that form a closed loop (i.e., a logical ring). Each virtual ring (associated with the logical ring) has independent control frames (i.e., control planes) that need to be transmitted to manage the protection switching function of the “virtual” ring.
Traffic restoration in G.8032 involves implementing a ring block on a failed link, flushing Forwarding Databases (FDB), i.e., a Layer 2 Media Access Control (MAC) table, and generating signaling for a Signal Fail (SF) to notify other nodes in the virtual ring of the failed link. Assuming a node, network element, switch, etc. (collectively referred to as a “node” or “nodes”) operates a plurality of virtual rings, traffic restoration in G.8032 at the node is conventionally performed in a non-ordered manner where the node does not guarantee any particular virtual ring is restored in any particular order, i.e., different virtual rings will implement the traffic restoration steps above concurrently without individual virtual rings being specifically ordered by the node. Disadvantageously, this non-ordered manner does not account for different priorities of services on the virtual rings as well as results in overall longer restoration times since flushing the FDB in a non-ordered manner requires flushing per individual virtual ring, resulting in multiple flushes which are slow operations.